Collisions of the mind, part 2.
Elusive characters and letting go...
This is part two about characters and their elusiveness. You can read part one here:
In part one I was talking about how difficult it can be to cast the right person in your film. About how much your plans, hopes and dreams, and even the existence of the projects are tied up in that person.
This is about the opposite - what happens when you start realising someone is wrong for your film?
I once made some short documentaries in the Amazon for Channel 4 (I talked about them in this post). One of the stories I was desperate to make was about a man searching for El Dorado, the lost city of gold. I’d read about him, shared a very cryptic email, and had made him a central part of our plan.
I could see the film in my mind. An opening deep in the jungle as he hacked a path on another of his searches. A subtle, nuanced character study about madness and myth and gold.
I was probably imagining myself as a junior Herzog (a massive inspiration at the time), making a stunning film about a truly memorable character.
We travelled up river from Manaus to find him, which took 2 days. The next morning we went to his house and he wasn’t there. Nobody knew who we were talking about. We tried again later and this time he was in, but not exactly delighted to see us. He was highly suspicious. After about an hour or putting him at ease, he started to talk about his plans to find the lost city of gold (something I can’t write without thinking of that cartoon I used to watch as a kid).
Almost instantly, my dreams of what a great character he would be fell apart before us.
His plans were impossible to follow. He was pretty charmless and desperate. It felt both cruel and self-defeating to contemplate making a film about him. We walked away feeling chastened and dirty.
At least this time we hadn’t even gotten the camera out.
Choosing what to do with a character you have spent considerable time filming with is even harder.
Whilst making The Lure, I spent several days filming someone who never made it into the film. Not because she wasn’t captivating, or unclear - quite the opposite. Her story was incredible.
She’d been one of the characters I was most excited about when I met her. She had demanded to meet me on my first research trip, and her quiet voice, powerful gaze and ethereal way of moving made her seem like a sure thing for the film.
Her unique point of view on the whole treasure hunt was that whoever found Forrest Fenn’s treasure was going to switch souls with him. She wasn’t sure how, but she was convinced it was going to happen. That what Forrest wanted was immortality (I agreed with that) and by switching souls, he was going to achieve it.
I loved it. I loved that it came from a surprising source, and that it added an element that tapped into mythologies of the American West. We filmed together on different days and she even gave me a tour of where she worked. We edited pieces of what she said for the sizzle reel we made for the film, and she was in all the early rough cuts.
But it didn’t work. She introduced an element that was just one step too far into the world of ‘crazy Americans’, which the film wasn’t a part of. She was believable, convincing and articulate, but when it was boiled down to a scene, it made her look insane. So she stuck out and imbalanced the tone and the narrative of the film.
As soon as we cut her, the flow of everything was better.
I do try not to throw good money after bad, I promise. But some characters are just so damn enticing.
So often, I think of scraps of ideas that are folded into the theme of the film early on and feel essential. When I write, it’s like a scrapbook - pieces of ideas form and coalesce and grow into something more coherent. And characters that bring in a level of mythology and timelessness are a huge part of that. I’ve always loved writing like that (Eliot Weinberger is a favourite) and I’ve been inspired by the Harry Crews scene in Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus for a long time.
But with these characters it’s hard to separate out how much I want them to be part of the film from how much they naturally fit. They are essential to my process, but maybe not to the film.
These kind of characters can overload a story, or confuse an audience. They might get in the way of real emotional connection, or break from the intensity of a main character’s journey. And sometimes, the connection I see only exists in my mind.
Like now for instance, with my film about people trying to understand birds. The photographer Graciela Iturbide has been part of the inspiration and my scraps of scenes of the film from very early on.
How great would that be? Her photographs with birds, what she says about them and the incredible strength of personality she has seem so incredibly intoxicating.
I love her work, her ethos, the way she talks about the blend of work and life and everything else. She’s an artist who says she doesn’t seek out politics, but lives by the maxim that everything is inherently political.
(And if you can’t agree with that, then we need to have a strongly worded chat).
But would she fit the film? Or is it one extra element too much for the film? Would it derail the simplicity of storytelling or the inner motor of the film? Would it actually distract from the kind of joined up thinking that layers through a film and pulls you deeper and deeper in?
As you may be able to tell from these last posts, pieces of ideas collide in my brain all the time. This isn’t called Little Scraps of Filmmaking by mistake. Picking my way through them and keeping what really really matters is the hard bit.
Of course, when it’s obviously wrong, that’s easier. We once took a script to one of the big agencies for their suggested cast list. The script was the first feature I wrote, about an astronaut returning to earth and, overwhelmed by life back here, he fakes his own death and disappears into the woods. Very much a quiet, psychological film.
They suggested Chris Pratt. And not only did they suggest Chris Pratt, but they said that he was busy for 4 years, so would we mind waiting for him.
Now, there was no chance he was even going to actually read it - we were being used by his team to tick a box - but the exercise was a good example of how easy it is to mentally move on from something good.
But when you have someone special and full of potential and possibility, but just not right for your film? That’s way harder.
And as in Part 1, the question comes back to - when do you give up on someone and start imagining someone else in their place?
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